New Theatre The New Theatre was once called "New York's most spectacularly unsuccessful theater" in the
WPA Guide to New York City. Envisioned in 1906 by
Heinrich Conried, a director of the
Metropolitan Opera House, its construction was an attempt to establish a great theatre at New York free of commercialism, one that, broadly speaking, would resemble the
Comédie Française of
Paris. Thirty founders each subscribed $35,000 at the start, and a building designed to be the permanent home of a repertory company was constructed on
Central Park West on the
Upper West Side at a cost of three million dollars. Architecturally, it was one of the handsomest structures in the city, designed by the prominent
Beaux-Arts architectural firm
Carrère and Hastings. With
Winthrop Ames as the only director, the
New Theatre Company occupied the building for only two seasons, 1909–10 and 1910–11. Capable of seating 2,300 persons, the New Theatre was opened on Saturday, November 6, 1909, with impressive ceremonies and apparently under the most favoring auspices, but a serious defect in the acoustics became apparent at once and this was only partly remedied by the installation of a sound-deflecting bell. The world premiere of Sergei Rachmaninoff's
3rd piano concerto took place on Sunday, November 28, 1909, at the New Theatre, with Rachmaninoff as soloist and Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Society. Several
Shakespearean plays were given, by far the most notable presentation being that of ''The Winter's Tale''. On the whole the company did its best ensemble work in some of the modern plays of that time, like
Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird and
Sister Beatrice,
Galsworthy's Strife, and
Edward Sheldon's
The Nigger starring
Annie Russell. A poetic drama of distinction was
Josephine Preston Peabody's
The Piper. In most cases the stage settings were of very high quality. The building was located a mile north of the
Theater District, and it was exceedingly expensive to maintain. Financially, the venture proved to be a
boondoggle. At the end of the second season, the founders of the company decided to abandon the theatre and lease it out. Plans were made to construct a smaller building in the theatre district, but it was found to be impracticable and the company folded. The theatre critic
William Winter wrote:
Century Theatre In 1911, the building was leased to other theatre managers, who changed the name to the Century Theatre, the Century Opera House (1913), and the Century once more (1915), with
Florenz Ziegfeld as manager. From Europe in 1912 came
Judith Gautier and
Pierre Loti, producers and supervisors of
The Daughter of Heaven. Despite their efforts, the critic of
The New York Times found the play "rich in spectacle, but dramatically deficient", and the scene changes tedious and "long delayed". In 1917, producers Florenz Ziegfeld and
Charles Dillingham opened the roof garden as a
nightclub and named it the Cocoanut Grove, based on the success of a similar venue, Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic at the
New Amsterdam Theatre. The "Shrine of Snobbism", as the
WPA Guide called it, was demolished in 1930. The next year, the
Art Deco Century Apartments (designed and developed by the office of
Irwin S. Chanin) was completed on the Century Theatre's site. ==Gallery==